Sep 01 2026 to Sep 01 2026 6:30 p.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

What does it take for an idea to survive a thousand years, even after the institution built to house it has burned to the ground?

Nalanda was one of the world’s earliest universities, drawing scholars from across Asia to study science, mathematics, philosophy, art, and poetry centuries before such an institution existed anywhere else. In this conversation, author and poet Abhay K joins Anupama Sekhar to trace the rise, fall, and re-rise of Nalanda.

Much of what we know about Nalanda arrives to us in fragments, pieced together from the accounts of foreign scholars and the material evidence its ruins left behind. This conversation moves through that fragmentary record to ask what Nalanda actually was, a monastery, a university, a civilizational statement, and what its story reveals about India’s place in the history of global learning. It considers, too, why an institution destroyed centuries ago continues to matter now, at a moment when its revival is once again underway.

Venue: Gallery
Speakers

Abhay K
Author & Poet
Abhay K. is the author of the bestseller Nalanda: How It Changed the World and several poetry collections. He is the editor of The Book of Bihari Literature, The Bloomsbury Book of Great Indian Love Poems, Capitals, New Brazilian Poems and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Great Indian Poems. His poems have appeared in over a hundred literary magazines, including Poetry Salzburg Review and Asia Literary Review. His ‘Earth Anthem’ has been translated into over 160 languages. He received the SAARC Literary Award (2013) and was invited to record his poems at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., in 2018. His translations of Kalidasa’s Meghaduta and Ritusamhara from Sanskrit won him the KLF Poetry Book of the Year Award (2020–21). He has also translated the Magahi novel Fool Bahadur and Hanuman Chalisa. His paintings on the Buddhist philosophy of ‘Shunyata’ have been exhibited at the National Museum, New Delhi, Bihar Museum, Patna and Salarjung Museum, Hyderabad.

Anupama Sekhar
Director, BIC
Anupama Sekhar is an arts manager specialising in transnational cultural relations. Previously, she was Director for Culture at the Asia-Europe Foundation, and Director for Policy and Engagement at IFACCA, the global network of ministries of culture. Since 2015, she has been a consultant for UNESCO. She is currently the Director of Bangalore International Centre.